by Alison Knowles: A Retrospective (1960–2022)

July 20, 2022–February 12, 2023

Best known as a core member of Fluxus, the first comprehensive exhibition of Knowles's work, spanning the entire breadth of her still-active career, from her intermedia works of the 1960s to participatory and relational art from the 2000s.

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Students gather at The House of Dust, California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Valencia, CA, 1971; Courtesy California Institute of the Arts, Institute Archives.
Alison Knowles: Taxis and Buses, 1960; oil and screen print on canvas; 96 5/8 x 54 1/8 in.; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Archiv Sohm.
Alison Knowles and Amanda Degener: Tamashi, 2002; screen print on indigo- and walnut- dyed handmade flax paper in box, published by Cave Paper. Photo: David Familian.
Installation view, Alison Knowles: Celebration Red (Homage to Each Red Thing), 1994/2016, at Alison Knowles, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Courtesy the Carnegie Museum of Art.

Upcoming
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Upcoming
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Selected
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Past
Films
Past
Events

Past Events

Sunday, February 12,12 PM
Curator's Talk: Karen Moss on by Alison Knowles: A Retrospective (1960-2022)

Join Karen Moss, guest curator of by Alison Knowles, for a special Curator's Talk marking the closing day of by Alison Knowles. Art historians and catalogue essayists Lucia Fabio, Hannah Higgins and Nicole Woods will also participate.

BAMPFA
Saturday, January 14, 11:30 AM
Gallery + Studio: A Little Fluxusbook

Inspired by Alison Knowles’s many imaginative books, create your own Fluxusbook from elements of your choosing.

BAMPFA

For ages 6–12 with accompanying adult(s)
Saturday, December 10, 11:30 AM
Gallery + Studio: A House of Imagination

Follow artist Alison Knowles’s example and generate poetic instructions for building a house!

BAMPFA

For ages 6–12 with accompanying adult(s)
Saturday, October 15, 1–2:30 PM
by Alison Knowles: A Symposium

Moderated by guest curator Karen Moss, this symposium reassessing the importance and impact of Alison Knowles’s work features art historians Hannah B. Higgins and Nicole L. Woods, and artist/educator/writer Simon Leung.

BAMPFA
Sunday, October 9, 7:30 PM
Full: Event Scores of Alison Knowles

UC Berkeley students from the course Creativity in Practice perform several of Fluxus artist Alison Knowles’s provocative event "scores," involving simple actions, ideas, and objects from everyday life, recontextualized as performance.

BAMPFA

Programmed by Sean Carson
Selected Wednesday, 12:15 PM; Sundays, 2 PM
Guided Tours: by Alison Knowles: A Retrospective (1960–2022)

Graduate students —Claire Chun and Patricia de Nobrega-Gomes—offer tours of by Alison Knowles on Wednesdays at 12:15 PM and Sundays at 2:00 PM.

BAMPFA
Saturday, July 23, 1 PM
Curator's Talk: Karen Moss and Hannah B Higgins on by Alison Knowles

Karen Moss, curator of by Alison Knowles, and Fluxus scholar and Knowles’s daughter, Hannah Higgins, offer an immersive tour of the exhibition. The art historians highlight specific works and series, addressing the trajectory of Knowles’s art, from her earliest paintings and involvement with Fluxus in the 1960s to her large-scale intermedia projects and experiments across disciplines from the 1970s to the present.

BAMPFA
Saturday, July 23, 2:30 PM
Celebration Red

Visitors are invited to bring an everyday red object to the museum to contribute to Alison Knowles’s participatory, interactive installation Celebration Red. Her original score Celebrate every red thing asks participants to choose a single red object and place it on a red grid on the floor.

BAMPFA

Past Films

by Alison Knowles: A Retrospective (1960–2022)

July 20, 2022–February 12, 2023

Best known as a core member of Fluxus, the avant-garde art group founded in 1962, Alison Knowles has created groundbreaking experiments that have influenced contemporary art and artists for over fifty years. This is the first comprehensive exhibition of her work, spanning the entire breadth of her still-active career, from her intermedia works of the 1960s to participatory and relational art from the 2000s.

Knowles creates poetic works from her extended engagement with ordinary materials, found objects, and everyday life. In 1959, influenced by John Cage, she experimented with chance operations to determine a painting’s composition and made silkscreen-on-canvas works predating those of Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol. She became known for her Fluxus event scores, including Make a Salad and Identical Lunch, which she has performed internationally since the early 1960s. Her major intermedia works include The Big Book (1967), which expanded an artist-made publication into a monumental installation, and the multifaceted House of Dust (1970), a poetry project that produced one of the earliest computer-generated poems.

Before entering the galleries, visitors see “Alison Knowles: Art/Life/Events,” an illustrated timeline that introduces the artist and the overarching trajectory of her career. The first half of the exhibition focuses on her artistic practice from 1960 to the early 1970s, ranging from her early silk-screened painting, Fluxus event scores, and multiples to major intermedia projects. The second part includes Knowles’s diverse range of practices from the 1970s to the present, including sculpture and installations; cyanotypes and mixed media prints; sound compositions and radio works; paper scrolls and flax and bean sculptures; artists’ books, multiples, and publications; and collaborations with other artists.
The exhibition is accompanied by a major exhibition catalog copublished by BAMPFA and D.A.P., the first comprehensive book on Knowles’s work to be published by a museum. Richly illustrated with more than 250 images, the full-color catalog, includes a softcover lay-flat binding, special colored papers for each section, die-cut section dividers and a chronology. Each cover in the edition is unique, using makeready sheets produced from printing the interior of the book. Catalogs are available for sale in the BAMPFA store, and online.

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Fluxus Reverb: Events, Scores, Boxes & More
July 20 to February 12

by Alison Knowles: A Retrospective (1960-2022) is guest curated by Dr. Karen Moss with Lucia Fabio, organized by BAMPFA staff, and coordinated by Stephanie Cannizzo, associate curator, and Christina Yang former chief curator.
The exhibition is made possible through lead support from the Terra Foundation for American Art and from Dr. Rosalyn M. Laudati and Dr. James Pick. It is also supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.